Peace with Justice — David Thomas

I had a fun time staying with our Discipling for Development (D for D) leaders at the Friends cabin at the Kumbya retreat center on Lake Kivu. Gaudance, Simparinka’s wife, has a contagious laugh, and we were often all laughing. During the day, Friday and Saturday we had ten leaders from the Kirambo D for D team. I had the intention of moving them all the way through the lessons leading up to achieving a manageable list of subjects to study that will help them move out of poverty. As we began we realized that we had to go back and review a lot. They brought us a good list of about 40 problems and resources their church has. But as we looked at these things with them, we saw they needed help to think more deeply about them. We spent one and a half days doing root cause analyses on the problems. We all started to go much deeper and to understand more clearly the things that hold people down in poverty.

We didn’t get as far as I had planned, but we did get them to do some excellent root cause analysis. They will continue doing these analyses with others in their church for the next couple months. We felt the Holy Spirit guiding us in our discussions. I appreciate Simparinka and Tertullian’s leadership and excellent way of guiding the group and helping them move forward.

I also was able to show our leaders the lesson path our D for D Musovu team (Brad, Dancila, and me) took in helping the Musovu church come up with their curriculum of study. Brad and I had taken extensive notes throughout that process, so I lined up around the room all these lesson plans and notes to show the path between the Mobilization and Empowerment stage. It was fun to walk them through it. We have a long path of transformation ahead of us, but identifying the roots of the real underlying problems, and the resources at our disposal is a good first step.